Day 9 may be Jack Bauer's longest yet, because the unemployment line moves fucking slow.

Yup, after eight season, Fox has finally put the last nail in the coffin that has been "24." With increased costs, decreased ratings, and increased critical panning, folks have been speculating about cancellation for a while now, and those rumors began to take real flight a few weeks ago. Now that Fox has killed the speculation, the only thing that remains to be seen is whether NBC will try to pick up the show, as has also been widely rumored in the last week or two.

Exec producer Howard Gordon noted that folks "want the show to end as close to peak form as possible," apparently not realizing that the show was allowed to continue about seven seasons beyond its peak. Then he went on to tell a bold-faced lie: "If they said tomorrow that you have a ninth season, it's not something we'd be up for because we realize Jack's story in the real-time format has been told." Seriously, that's the biggest heap of bullshit ever because if that were true, they would've announced that at the beginning of the season so they could pimp out the Last ... Season ... of "24"!!!, just like ABC's been doing with "Lost."

Of course, even if NBC doesn't scoop the show up, Jack Bauer won't really be going away just yet, because the widely-speculated movie is already in the works. In fact, it not only has a writer, Billy Ray (State of Play, but an underlying premise -- Jack goes to Europe!

... Man, I hope he runs into the Griswolds! Remember what Clark did to Eric Idol's character? That was some real fucking torture, Jack Bauer!